Note 41 — Chapter II · First Visit to New England
Reading edition
In 1641, the assembled citizens made the following declaration: “This Body Politick is a Democracie; that is to say, it is in the Power of the Body of Freemen, orderly assembled, or the major part of them, to make Just Lawes by which they will be regulated.” Under the same date the following act was passed: “It is ordered that none bee accounted a delinquent for doctrine,” and later in the same year this was re-affirmed in these words: the “Law of the last Court made concerning Libertie of Conscience in Point of Doctrine be perpetuated.” Quoted from Rhode Island Colony Records, by Jones, op. cit., p. 23.